Various types of search systems and methods and travel management systems and methods have been proposed.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,360,205, entitled “obtaining and utilizing commercial information” has disclosed a method for providing reservation information related to airline flights, lodging, transportation and the like using a communications network. In one embodiment, access to a server machine is divided into sessions. During a first session a user machine makes a first request for reservation information from the server machine. This first request includes input data from a first customer which relates to the desired reservation information. For example, the first customer may input travel times in the hopes of booking a flight which corresponds to those times. The server machine requests the reservation information from a number of target sites based upon the input data. Included in the number of target sites is a first and second target sites. The server machine obtains reservation information which includes first and second reservation information respectively from the first and second target sites.
In another example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,442,526, entitled “system for corporate travel planning and management” has disclosed a system and method for processing travel data and travel receipts. Travel data including travel segments is received by the system. Receipts for the trip are also received from a credit card provider. The received credit card data and travel data are each converted into a predefined format. The converted information is compared to match information in the receipts and the travel data such as chain codes or dates of travel. A list of matching data is output, such as to use in preparing an expense report.
Among those benefits and improvements that have been disclosed, other objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying figures. The figures constitute a part of this specification and include illustrative embodiments of the present invention and illustrate various objects and features thereof.